


Some Shadows are Black and White, others are Transparent

by TheDaysOfGold



Series: Psycho Pass - Between the Lines [2]
Category: Psycho-Pass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:41:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23354122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDaysOfGold/pseuds/TheDaysOfGold
Summary: Episode: 19 - Transparent ShadowTimestamp: 2:10Ginoza can feel his Psycho Pass deteriorating like salt dissolving in water. He sits with his councillor, realising that he's been travelling down the path that Kogami took, that his father took, for some time now. But it doesn't frighten him like it should, because he has some time still, and maybe, just maybe, there's someone to carry on Division One, should his downfall finally arrive.But they've still got the issue of finding Kogami before the 'latent' status is obsolete, before he kills Makashima and becomes a very real criminal. And as if that weren't enough, being on the clock is taking its toll on the whole crew.A retelling of some conversations from episode 19. I own nothing from Psycho Pass.Ginoza feels that he's the one under the most strain, being tested by the very thing that brought down both his father and his best friend, but it isn't until he overhears a conversation between Akane and Shion that he realises his second Inspector has been putting on a brave face the entire time. And he knows, now it's time to swallow his pride and confront some demons, many of which exist because of him.
Relationships: Ginoza Nobuchika/Tsunemori Akane
Series: Psycho Pass - Between the Lines [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566241
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Some Shadows are Black and White, others are Transparent

They sit by the fireplace. The room is dark, too dark, it seems to Ginoza. It’s lit by nothing more than the red glow of flickering flames, of a fireplace that isn’t really needed with the warming weather. For one of the most highly-credible psycho-therapy clinics in the country, Ginoza figures that the blinds should be drawn a little higher, let a little more light in, alleviate the oppressive sensation that permeates the room. But it’s too dark, and the firelight paints the carpet in red. A foreshadowing thing indeed.

“I'm afraid your hue has reached a critical state.” The doctor tells him, reading over a file on his screen.

His voice is soothing. That very feature may have been what Sybil chose him for. But Ginoza has been coming here for plenty of years, and they’ve long since established that, when it came to speaking with Ginoza, blunt was what the proverbial doctor ordered.

“In a way, it’s good that your crime coefficient is fluctuating,” he continues. “It means there’s still time for treatment, but that could change quickly.”

Ginoza stares on, ever-forward in eyes and mind, never looking back. No matter how much it called to him.

“You must be aware of the worst-case scenario if you don’t fix your hue.” The doctor stresses, because he can never really tell if the message gets through to Ginoza, given there’s rarely a change on his face, like waters that are never stirred. “Sibyl would declare you a latent criminal, and your life as you know it would come to an end.” He adds, because salt always goes better with the wound.

For Ginoza, it’s an old fire, one that simply will not go out. A detective that became a latent criminal, all because he wanted to solve cases and keep people safe.

_Here it is, my worst fear, right in front of me. What do I do now that it’s here?_

Sitting in the overly dark room, looking into the face of the doctor that could not deliver worse news, Ginoza can do nothing but chuckle. The doctor’s not sure he’s ever heard the sound before. Part of him wonders what a full, gut-wrenching laugh might sound like, but he’s seen enough patients from the CID walk through his door to know that happiness does not exist at the MWPSB.

“It’s funny,” Ginoza finally answers, but it seems that he’s speaking less to the doctor and more to himself.

_After all, what else can I do but laugh at this situation?_

“This happened to my old partner.” He says. _It’s as if this world spins around and around, and nothing ever changes._ “His hue got clouded like this and we weren’t certain which way it would go.”

The doctor seems surprised by this. He’s never heard Ginoza speak so openly about work, or anything, really. Despite being his councillor, he really knows little of the demons that cause Ginoza to keep so much hidden away, to shoulder so much. It feels like a failing on his part, unable to get past the wall of ice and address those demons, but, funnily, he realises that it’s probably better for them both that the situation is skewed in such a way.

“So, what did your partner do?” The doctor asks. “Did he fix it?”

“No, and it cost him his job,” Ginoza answers, ever straight-faced. “Now I'm his boss.”

The doctor frowns a little, but Ginoza just shrugs, because from here on out, this man will not understand the story. He has never walked the path to a Latent Criminal status, Ginoza knows, never had anyone he’s loved walk such a path. Ginoza knows that the road from a respectable citizen to a dog in the mud is as avoidable as the sun rising in the morning, and that, no matter what his doctor asks now, there’s nothing to alter the course.

_I’m just waiting for Sibyl to push me over the threshold._

“It’s ironic really,” he says, letting himself be loose with the tongue for just a short while. Before it all comes crashing down. “The way I’ve conducted myself, it was all to avoid his fate. Yet here I am. What a joke.”

_The System is flawless. I was the joke, thinking I could outsmart it._

The doctor looks back, catching the sight of attractive features in the omnipresent red glow of the fire, and sees, for perhaps the first time, an expression that he’s never known on the Inspector. Content. Understanding. Complete acceptance.

And it scares him to his core.

This is the look of a man staring down the end game.

“I’ll set up a therapy program that you can begin immediately,” he says, resorting back to protocol at the sight of something so frightening, something that could bring down the wrath of Sibyl upon them. He stumbles over the words a little, as if in fear that his own hue would cloud by merely being in this Inspector’s presence, a man that destroys bodies with Lethal Eliminators and welcomes the punishment of the System.

But the words seem to surprise Ginoza, who denies the offer. He’s not afraid of the CID finding out the alarming Psycho Pass number, rather, he's afraid of them realising how accepting he is of fate. After all, if Kogami’s and his father’s tales are anything to go by, Ginoza has just become a ticking bomb with a short fuse. He doesn't need the CID getting involved and putting him into intensive therapy, not when they're so close to Makashima.

“I can’t start a program now,” he says firmly, standing.

“So, you're leaving?” The doctor asks, watching him fetch his blazer. It’s another symbol of their strange relationship; in all the places he’s ever seen Ginoza, never is he dishevelled. Never a loose tie, never buttons undone, never a missing blazer. Except when they speak of an increasing Psycho Pass.

And it makes him wonder what Ginoza is _truly_ afraid of, if not a clouded hue and an increased crime coefficient. Up until that point, it seemed to the astute doctor that this was the fear that plagued his patient most, but now, seeing Ginoza so accepting of that fate, it makes him wonder if he should have probed a little deeper, sought out the demons that even Ginoza might not know are lurking about.

But, then again, sometimes it’s better to leave the transparent shadows alone.

And as if to exemplify the point, Ginoza speaks with his back turned, returning the blazer to where it so perfectly belongs. “Doc, I think I’ll be alright.”

“I can’t be held responsible for anything that happens to you now,”

“My current partner is a young woman who just became an Inspector this year,” Ginoza answers, blazer now in place. _Not a naïve child, not a rookie, not any less a detective than me._ “Watching her approach the job, it gives me hope.”

_She’s someone I’d be happy to work under, if it comes to that._

The doctor watches him. _This is a dangerous game, Ginoza._

And as if understanding the silence, Ginoza glances over his shoulder. “A positive attitude makes for a clear hue, right doctor?”

_We must play Sibyl’s game, until she decides to throw us out._

He returns to the CID office for the afternoon shift. Filing through reports, his eyes constantly flick to the three empty seats in the row. The first, the oldest, belongs to Kagari. Still missing since the riots, and with every lead they uncover buried by unfortunate circumstance or orders from the top, Ginoza feels further from an answer than the day he disappeared, as if it’s one step forward and nine steps back.

Then there’s the second oldest empty seat; Kogami. Ginoza cannot even begin to unravel the thoughts surrounding that particular demon. Where he is, what he’s doing, why he’s doing it; they're all questions with simple answers, but complicated repercussions. And, for his part in the CID, his hands are tied to help the only friend that’s ever stood by him.

_Just like my father, I can feel it happening again._

Then there’s the third empty seat in the room; Akane’s seat. Though, this isn’t from her being late, nor from her being absent. She’s not due to start for another hour, but if he knows anything about his second in command, it’s that she’ll be through the door any second now, ready to devote every waking hour to the case that has both her head in a mess and her heart in a knot, and probably on a war path about it too.

The door opens, and she paces the length of the office. Ginoza garners a deep breath.

_Here we go._

“I’m sure most of you have heard the bad news by now,” he opens, speaking formally and plainly. No need to sugar coat the situation. Everyone’s pissed off, and there’s no harm in that. “Kogami has escaped. There’s no doubt about it.”

“Yes.” Akane answers, lacking the sweet tone that so often comes with her words. Of them all, she’s the angriest, but the dangerous sort of anger, the quiet type, the stuff that Sibyl loves to sniff out.

Ginoza knows that he’ll have to keep her focused, lest her heart make her act irrationally. On the surface, many may call their Inspectors polar opposites, but really, they're birds of the same feather.

“Kogami is going after Makashima,” Ginoza tells the crew. “But we are too.”

“What if we find him?” Kunizuka asks, the only one blunt enough to.

“If you find the escaped Enforcer, do not be afraid to do what is necessary.”

“So, let me get this straight,” Akane adds, but she doesn’t turn his way. Ginoza doesn’t need to see her face to understand her discontent. He can hear it in the venom of her words. “You want us to capture Makashima _alive_ , but to _kill_ Kogami on site?”

“That’s right.” Ginoza answers, without hesitation. _Whether you like it or not, your hands are tied too._

“Why don’t we put this Kogami situation on the backburner for a while,” Masaoka cuts in, adding some of the old-school level-headedness to the tension of the room. _These kids, all their titles, and none of them know how to handle office politics._ “Let’s remember that Makashima is the active killer.”

But Akane’s not sure it’ll be so easy.

“I wonder where that monster has been hiding,” Kunizuka adds, understanding Masaoka’s desire to move the conversation along. They too might be birds of the same feather, tested by the world in ways that the Inspectors have yet to learn.

“At least his face is in the system,” Ginoza answers. “Since the riots, many of the city’s cameras are down. It’ll be five more days before they're back up. That means, we cannot rely on facial recognition to track him.”

_I’m chasing a killer that has me obsessed, my Psycho Pass is suffering as the payment, and I'm reduced to ineffective, old-school methods. Could this be any more like my father’s downfall?_

“Why are we assuming that Makashima is still in the city?” Kunizuka continues, oblivious to Ginoza’s internal thoughts. “He could have left already.”

“No, he’ll simply adjust his plan,” a voice calls from across the room, but it lacks the nastiness of a moment before. This time, when Akane speaks, she sounds just like Kogami. “He won’t flee. It’s not in his nature to give up just because there’s heat. He’ll wage this war until his last dying breath.”

Ginoza watches her, and almost repeats the doctor’s silent warning from earlier. Not that he has any right to, given this mode of thinking has brought him right in line with Akane, and right in line with Kogami too; obsession over Makashima. They might call the Enforcers hunting dogs, but really, no detective can resist the desire to chase criminals, like sharks following the smell of blood in the water.

“Our society is built on careful control.” Akane continues. “He’s injecting it with raw human emotion. That’s why he called Kogami that night, to arouse his base curiosity.”

Ginoza can feel it slip through his fingers. _Careful Akane._

“He wants to wake us all up.” She finishes steadfast, and it’s in these words that her first Inspector realises he’s already lost her.

Because she sounds just like he does. Just like Kogami did three years ago. Just like his father used to. Hooked on the end of the criminal’s line.

On the path to the Psycho Pass threshold.

It’s late in the afternoon when he overhears a conversation that he shouldn’t have. It wasn’t an intentional thing, or at least, that’s what Ginoza tells himself. Doing so rids him of having to think of the real reason he lingers at the door long after Shion has lit her cigarette, long after Akane opens up to the only person on their crew who never treated her like a rookie, who could always see eye-to-eye with her. After all, being the CID’s lab-rat was never a very glamorous job. The downtrodden tend to find one another. It’s the only reason Ginoza ever felt like he belonged at Division One.

Home of the downtrodden.

“It’s been a busy week,” Shion opens, her skin made all the more pale by the white light of the computer screens. Ginoza lingers by the open door, just around the corner, out of sight. He had come down to fetch Akane, and had every intention of venturing in, of giving up his snooping and returning to work, until Shion speaks again, and her words root him to the spot. “Are you alright, Akane?”

“I guess so,” she answers. “The team can’t afford for me to be down, can it?”

“Well, my life is no bed of roses, but if you need someone to talk to,”

Ginoza has never liked the way Shion left sentences unfinished, because he never had the ability to know where she intended to go with them. The ambiguity leaves him uneasy, but never more so than it does now.

_Does Tsunemori need someone to talk to? Does she feel that she can come to her superiors for help?_

He lingers at the door.

_Probably not. I haven’t exactly made that easy._

“Guess I really haven’t opened up about any of this,” Akane answers, and though Shion would think she’s speaking of the case, Ginoza knows she’s speaking of Kogami. Suspicion confirmed when she speaks again. “If Kogami becomes,” a pause, as if merely saying the words would bring them into reality. “If he becomes a real killer, as oppose to a latent criminal,” another pause, because this part is too hard to say. “Well, I can’t let that happen.”

And from the doorway, Ginoza realises that, despite the harsh hand he’s been dealt in life, a father labelled as a latent criminal and a best friend too, Akane faces the very real possibility that she might have just fallen in love with a _real_ criminal. All latent criminals are ticking time bombs, but the only one that’s ever snagged Akane’s heart has the shortest fuse of them all.

Shion puts out her cigarette, as if that could possibly help clear the air. “Look, Akane, you shouldn’t be trying to shoulder all of this on your own.”

And though she speaks to the second Inspector, Ginoza can feel the words rip straight through him. He’s not sure if that’s because _he_ should be the one speaking this to Akane, or if he should have let someone like Shion past the wall of ice to let _them_ speak some sense into him. Either way, he knows he’s at fault. The question lies in who suffers for that the most.

“I’ll be fine,” Akane answers, mind ever on the task. “Look, if you're worried about my Psycho Pass, you should know it’s not cloudy, just pale turquoise.” Another pause, and then the anxiety. “Why doesn’t this affect me, Shion? Am I that cold-hearted?”

“Your heart and Psycho Pass are two very different things.”

“But then, what is a person’s Psycho Pass, and what’s their heart?”

_And why do we have complete control over one, and zero control over the other?_

Ginoza hears the conversation still for a moment, and he wonders if he’s been found out, but the reason for the silence comes swiftly enough. Soft sniffles, stuffed into the arms of a woman with far too much cleavage and far too big a heart.

And Ginoza realises _this_ is why Akane keeps a brave face around him; because he asks all of the living, breathing people around him to be as cold and detached as he is, as if they’re walking corpses when they have plenty of things to keep living and fighting for.

He wonders, briefly, while standing in that abandoned hall, if Kogami ever faced an issue like this while he was in charge. But he doubts it. That man always had charm and charisma in spades. He’d never be so lax as to let a subordinate suffer like this.

Ginoza has always prided himself on keeping Enforcers firmly aware of their position, but in that pride, missed the fact that he kept _everyone_ in that position of inferiority, so that his second in command had to come to the lab-rat in the basement for some compassion, because the CID office was so stripped of it.

So, mustering more courage than he has in a while, because confronting dangerous criminals is nothing compared to confronting a woman in distress, particularly when _you're_ the reason for it, Ginoza rounds the corner loudly enough to give them warning that he’s coming.

Akane straightens, hiding her face long enough to regain composure.

_That’s what they do when I walk in the room._

But he knows that’s no excuse. No more being the enemy.

“Inspector Tsunemori,” he says, addressing the room rather than singling her out. Still, the sharpness in his voice, a natural by-product of nervousness, doesn’t really make that clear. “I’d like to speak with you in private. Meet me on the balcony in ten minutes.”

And then he steps out, afraid that Shion might just bring out those red nails and tear him apart. He’s never quite thought her one for violence, but there’s something about that stare that makes him wonder if the only reason is a lack of the right incentive. Well, before now, that is.

Akane shares a confused look with Shion, before wiping her cheeks, lifting her chin, and doing as her superior instructs, promptly leaving the room and hailing the lift. With tears shed, she feels stronger, as if she’s shed some monsters, one salty droplet at a time.

If her boss wants to speak business, then she’ll remain blunt and professional. If he wants to speak of other matters, however, then he’s caught her at a very, very bad time indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! Two stories in a fortnight? Don't say I don't look after you. I guess that's what a little home-isolation will do to you. I hope everyone is staying happy and healthy, wherever you are in the world.
> 
> This chapter is basically me putting off writing Gino's big, defining scene (I think we can all agree what that one is). I want to tackle that soon, but I don't think I've done enough groundwork for it yet. Please be patient for me. Also, as you might realise from this chapter, I've also opened up the possibility of writing a not-on-screen scene. Originally, I was going to stick to adaptation-style stuff, but I don't know, I think writing something original might be fun. Particularly, due to this position in the narrative, Akane doesn't realise the stress Gino is under, not for an episode or two. It might be fun having her unload on him, then realising the position he's in, and regretting some of what she said. I think some scenes like this would be nice, particularly given how chill they become by season 2. And there's another can of worms; to adapt scenes of S2, or to not? Let me know what you'd like.
> 
> I might disappear for a little while. I'm finally in the editing stage for my second novel, and she's like a space-time-warping black hole that sucks in hours upon hours. But I will endeavour to leave you with tidbits like this along the way. If you want something more meaty to delve into, check out my novel on Amazon. Link is in my bio (and if you do, leave a review and let me know you came from the Archive). I love getting comments back. They are genuinely my lifeblood.
> 
> Anyway, I put a few easter eggs into this one, references to titles/phrases used in other episodes. Let me know if you spot one.
> 
> Be safe, drink more tea, read more books, and look after each other. I'll see you in the next one.


End file.
